The 2018 National Potato Conference, organized by Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) in association with Bord Bia and Teagasc took place on February 20.

The Irish minister of state for food, forestry and horticulture, Andrew Doyle, stated that consumers must “make a conscious choice to buy native Irish vegetables. They’re fresh, they’re in season and they’re wholesome. They’re produced to the highest quality and standards.”

According to IFA, the things to learn from the Conference are:

The Potato Promotion Campaign, running since 2015 is working – Irish potato sales are at their highest level in the last 10 years, with EUR195m worth of potatoes sold last year, and there has been a 20% increase in potato sales volume since 2013.

If you want to get the most nutritional benefit from your spuds, you should eat them with skins to maximize the fiber content.

Preparing potatoes in advance doesn’t just make sense to save time – reheating cooked potatoes increases their resistant starch content, which is great for your gut.

When potatoes are included in the basket, grocery trips are worth EUR27.90 more than the average shop.

Salad potatoes present an opportunity for Irish potato growers to displace UK imports – and they are taking advantage of it. The area of salad potatoes planted increased from 148ha to 216ha between 2015 and 2017, while 5,400 tones were produced in 2017, compared to 3,764 in 2015.

Irish shops sell potatoes once every second, but potato growers get less than one-fifth of the price consumers pay.

500,000 people have visited www.potato.ie, the potato recipe website, since it was launched.

Shoppers are not buying big bags of potatoes as much anymore; instead growth is in mid-size packs: 2.5Kg – 5Kg bags have become increasingly popular over the last three years, while larger 5Kg-7.5Kg have seen a decline in share since 2016.

Just because something says ‘fat-free’ or ‘sugar-free’ it doesn’t mean it’s healthy, if it’s been processed to get that way – whole natural foods like potatoes are what we should really look out for.

Roosters remain the dominant potato variety of choice in Ireland, but they are losing share, while Golden Wonders have seen the strongest growth.